Destroy, She Said

A Novel

Marguerite Duras

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780802151544
• eBook ISBN: 9780802190574
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

In this classic novel by the bestselling author of  The Lover, erotic intrigue masks a chillingly deceptive form of madness.
 
Elisabeth Alione is convalescing in a hotel in rural France when she meets two men and another woman. The sophisticated dalliance among the four serves to obscure an underlying violence, which, when the curtain of civilization is drawn aside, reveals in her fellow guests a very contemporary, perhaps even new, form of insanity.
 
Like many of Marguerite Duras's novels,  Destroy, She Said owes much to cinema, displaying a skillful interplay of dialogue and description. There are recurring moods and motifs from the Duras repertoire: eroticism, lassitude, stifled desire, a beautiful woman, a mysterious forest, a desolate provincial hotel.
 
Included in this volume is an in-depth interview with Duras by Jacques Rivette and Jean Narboni.

DESTROY, SHE SAID

Note for Performance

For the theater, a single set consisting of the hotel dining room and the grounds outside, separated by a window that can be raised and lowered.

An abstract décor would be best.

The whole depth of the stage should be used. A plain tarpaulin backcloth could represent the forest.

No attempt should be made to represent the tennis courts. Only the sound of the balls.

No need for any people but the main characters. The others can be suggested by the light falling on various objects: chaises-longues in a circle, or separate, or facing each other, empty. In the dining room, white cloths on the tables supposed to be “occupied.”

The music at the end is fugue no. 15 (in some recordings 18 or 19) of J. S. Bach's “The Art of the Fugue.”

The play should be performed in a medium-sized theater, preferably a modem one.

No public dress rehearsal should be held.

Alissa is of average height, petite if anything. Not childlike: she is a child. Very easy in her movements. Blue jeans and bare feet. Thick untidy hair, blonde or brown.

Stein and Max Thor are both about the same height, and both wear ordinary suits. Neither is careless in his dress.

Stein has a long rapid stride.

Max Thor walks slowly, and talks much more slowly than Stein.

Stein is transfixed with knowledge. Knowledge comes to Max Thor only through Stein and Alissa.

No one actually “cries out,” even when the words are used: the words indicate an inner reaction only.

An overcast sky. The bay windows shut.

From where he is in the dining room he can't see outside.

But she can. She is looking out. Her table touches the windowsill.

The light makes her screw up her eyes. They move to and fro. Some of the other guests are watching the tennis matches too. But he can't see.

He hasn't asked to be moved to another table, though.

She doesn't know she is being watched.

It rained this morning about five.

Today the air the balls thud through is close and heavy. She is wearing a summer dress.

The book is in front of her. Begun since he arrived? or before?

Beside the book are two bottles of white pills. She takes some at every meal. Sometimes she opens the book. Then shuts it again almost at once. And looks at the tennis matches.

On other tables are other bottles and other books.

Her hair is black, greyish black, smooth, not in good condition, dry. You can't tell what color her eyes are. Even when she turns back toward the room they're still blinded by the glaring light near the window. Round the eyes, when she smiles, the flesh is already delicately lined. She is very pale.

None of the people in the hotel play tennis. The players are local boys and girls. No one minds.

“It's pleasant to have the youngsters about. And they're very considerate.”

No one but he has noticed her.

“You get used to the noise.”

When he arrived six days ago she was already there, the book and the pills in front of her. She was muffled up in a long jacket and black slacks. It was cool.

He noticed how well-dressed she was, her figure, then the way she moved, the way she slept on the grounds every day, her hands.

Someone telephones.

The first time she was in the grounds. He didn't listen to the name. The second time he couldn't catch it.

So someone phones after her afternoon nap. By arrangement, no doubt

Sunshine. The seventh day.

There she is again, by the tennis courts, on a white chaise-longue. There are other white chaises-longues, mostly empty, empty and lying stranded face to face, or in circles, or alone.

After her nap he loses sight of her.

He watches her from the balcony as she sleeps. She is tall, and looks as if she were dead, just slightly bent at the hips. She is slim; thin.

The courts are deserted at this hour. Tennis is not allowed during nap time. It starts again about four and goes on till dusk.

The seventh day. But the torpor of the siesta is shattered by a man's voice, sharp, almost brutal.

No one answers. He wasn't talking to anyone.

No one wakes.

She's the only one so near the tennis courts. The others are farther away, either in the shade under the hedges or on the grass in the sun.

The voice that just spoke goes on echoing through the hotel grounds.

Day. The eighth. Sunshine. It's hot now.

Though she is usually so punctual, she wasn't there when he went into the dining room at lunchtime. She came in after they had started serving, smiling, calm, less pale. He'd known she must still be there because of the book and the pills, her place set as usual, and because there had been no stir in the hotel corridors during the morning. No arrivals, no departures. So he knew, quite logically, that she hadn't left.

When she comes in she walks past his table.

She sits in profile facing the windows. This makes it easier for him to keep watch on her.

She is beautiful. But it is invisible.

Does she know?

“No. No.”

The voice dies away over by the gate into the forest. No one answers. It is the same voice—sharp, almost brutal.

Not a cloud in the sky today. The heat is increasing, becoming settled, permeating the forest, the grounds of the hotel.

“Almost oppressive, don't you think?”

Blue blinds have been let down over the windows. Her table is in the blue light coming through them. It makes her hair black, her eyes blue.

Today the balls seem to thud right through your head and your heart.

Dusk in the hotel. She sits on in the neon light of the dining room, drained of color, older.

With a sudden nervous gesture she pours some water into her glass, opens the bottles, takes out some pills and swallows them.

It's the first time she's taken twice the prescribed dose.

It's st...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Works by Marguerite Duras
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Destroy, She Said
• Destruction and Language: An Interview